How we decide

Every page here ends in a judgement, so it is fair to ask how that judgement is made.

What goes into a verdict

Each problem is assessed against five things:

• Urgency — how quickly the situation changes if nothing is done.
• Safety risk — what the realistic worst case is, and who it affects.
• Consequences of failure — whether ignoring it stays cheap or becomes expensive.
• Ease of remediation — a five-minute fix and a workshop job justify different advice.
• Authoritative guidance — what regulators, manufacturers and standards bodies actually say.

Those combine into one of four verdicts: YES, YES, BUT, PROBABLY NOT, or DON’T IGNORE. Then the situation checker adjusts the answer, because a warning light and a visibly flat tire are not the same question.

What this is not

This is not a measurement, and we are not going to dress it up as one. There is no scoring algorithm behind the verdict and no claim of scientific precision. It is structured editorial judgement, applied consistently and shown with its reasoning so you can disagree with it.

We also cannot see your vehicle, your home or your appliance. Every page is triage — helping you work out whether this needs attention now, soon, or whenever — not an inspection.

Numbers we refuse to invent

The most common question on a page like this is “how long can I leave it?” and the most common answer elsewhere is a fabricated one. If no authoritative source supports a specific distance, duration or threshold, we say so instead of guessing. A confident wrong number on a safety page is worse than no number.

Review

Pages carry a review date and the scope of that review. Where a named expert has reviewed a page we will say who they are and what qualifies them. Where none has, we say nothing — we do not attach invented credentials to a page to make it look more authoritative than it is.